Free-Range Rants

I posted recently in a blog, that I used to be liberal, understanding, forgiving.  I have tried to give everyone the benefit of the doubt and the right to their opinion.  However, when some people open their mouths, or let their fingers type, what spews out, more and more, just tries my patience.

In the Op/Ed letters in today’s paper, there was one from a familiar name.  Let’s say it was Sahib Shah.  Definitely not a local boy.  He’s one of those regular contributors, getting a letter published almost every 60-day restriction period.  He’s always bitching about political and social standards….as they apply to him and his army of beige friends.  He wants to change all of the Canadian ways of doing things, so that they become more like what he was used to.  The shrill and ever-more-common rants from folks like him just fuel my intolerance and obstinacy.  If you don’t like the way we do things, why did you come here?

Today, he was bitching about the race for the GOP candidate in the United States.  He apparently loves Ron Paul and hates the three front-runners.  According to him, Gingrich, Santorum and Romney favor, or would allow, military action against Iran.  He’s all worked up about politicians in a country he doesn’t live in and their possible actions about another country he doesn’t live in.  His letter generated some very un-PC thoughts.  Like, “Why don’t you phone up your good, personal friend, Nasty Smurf, the president of Iran, and convince him to cancel his nuclear program, or, better yet, why don’t you take your rag-head family of terrorists and move to beloved Iran.”

I hate assholes like this, not because they’re narrow-minded, opinionated fools, or that they’re doing their best to pull our way of life down around our ears, but because by constant, continued exposure to this asshattery, like Rush Limbaugh, they’ve dragged me down to their level.  I used to be better than this.

The story of a local man, arrested, STRIP-SEARCHED and held in jail overnight, with only a blanket to cover himself, has apparently gone international.  Americans, used to a chicken in every pot and a gun in every drawer, are wondering what in Hell this is all about.  His four-year-old daughter, in junior kindergarten, drew a picture of him with a handgun and told the teacher that her dad used it to shoot monsters and bad guys.  Now me, I’d treat any story that included monsters, very sceptically.

Everybody involved in this farce is now in full CYA mode.  The teacher says that, if a child is felt to be in danger, they must call Family Services.  Did the teacher ascertain if the gun was real, a toy, or imaginary, before shouting that the sky was falling?  Why does the mere presence of a gun automatically expose a child to danger?  Did the Principal who made the call, actually see the drawing?  It was done on a Dri-Erase board and, guess what, it got erased.  Did Family Services interview the kid, or visit the home, before calling the cops?  Did the cops over-react and throw their weight around unnecessarily?  Personal opinion, Oh Yeah!  They arrested him at his kid’s school, when he went to pick her up.  If they wanted to take him in, one officer should have sufficed.  For safety’s sake, two would have been understandable.  They sent three!  The police claim that the strip-search was for safety reasons.  He was supposed to have a gun at his home.  A thorough, routine pat-down should have been enough.  Where did they think he had the gun, up his ass?

Someone, probably the police, must have interviewed the little girl.  The newspaper reported an ass-covering statement that, “There was a jaw-droppingly accurate description of a semi-automatic pistol.”  From a four-year-old girl??  Most four-year-olds would have difficulty giving an accurate description of a mud puddle, if they were sitting in it.  Turns out, it was made of mostly transparent plastic and fired little plastic beads.  I guess the police “forgot” to ask the questions that gave those answers.  I feel so safe and secure.  I won’t give up socialized medicine but, there are times I’d be tempted to trade it for the respect and freedom that American citizens enjoy.

The police made his pregnant wife come down to the station for questioning, but didn’t release him on bail.  Family Services took his other three kids away, questioned them and kept them from the parents overnight.  The police threatened that Family Services would keep his kids forever, or until they obtained a search-warrant if he didn’t sign a waiver for a(n illegal) search of his house.

The word-Nazi goes crazy about incorrect usage, especially by “professional” writers.  Amateurs, I can understand and grudgingly forgive, but, if you’re getting paid for it….  I used to rant that, if you’re going to use an eight-dollar word to make yourself appear erudite, the least you could do is use an eight-dollar dictionary, to ensure that you said what you thought you said.  Nowadays, with free on-line sites, you don’t even have to invest the eight bucks.  All you need is intelligence and commitment to your craft.  And we all see how well that’s been going.

A recent newspaper article described the ongoing campaign of a Scotsman seeking the independence of Scotland from England.  He didn’t get all the concessions that he wanted, but he did get some compromises, and agreement to further negotiation.  Despite the lack of a clear victory, the article stated that, “his overall tone was EMOLLIENT.”  The women readers know that emollient is a (skin) moisturiser.  I think that the writer meant ebullient, meaning bubblingly happy.  Then again, maybe he meant, left-handed, or corkscrew.  I don’t know, the Pretentious-to-English translation site is temporarily down.